It is time for reflection, philosophising and absurdity. Yes! that’s right, it is total irrationality. I have come to episode 28 on the novel Sophie’s world and this particular chapter reflects on the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard. Who was a famous Dutch philosopher around the mid-19th century living in Demark.
Things have taken a strange turn in the novel because Alberto (the philosopher) is teaching Sophie about the history of philosophy, but for some reason odd people keep turning up at Alberto's door. They have been sent by some metaphysical person called Albert Knag, who likes playing tricks on the two.
This time Alice in Wonderland turns up to offer Sophie potions to drink. Sophie is hesitant at first, but eventually drinks the potions. She begins to see the world differently and notices things, which she could not have possibly noticed before.
This then in turn leads on to a good explanation on how Kierkegaard saw the world. In a nutshell Kierkegaard was unhappy about how Christianity was being practiced in Denmark. He felt that Christianity was being associated too closely to reason and rationality. All this came about because of a major philosopher Hegel wanted to merge Christianity with reason. Hegel felt rationality is the way forward and can be used to push civilization to the perfect ideal. Everything could be proved, even god!
Kierkegaard was also at odds with the romantics, at odds with the idea of conformity, of rationality and of group action and group identity. Kierkegaard wanted to go back to the individual. He wanted people to see how important faith is to the person. Still, there was a major problem. How could Kierkegaard explain something as irrational and absurd as faith? This was a difficult task, and although he was at odds with Hegel, Kierkegaard did pick up some of Hegel’s traits. That is Kierkegaard wrote books (via pseudo names) to get people’s attention.
Kierkegaard explained the importance of religion in many famous books such as Fear and Trembling, either/or and Stages of a life's way. The main idea's Kierkegaard wanted to push forward is that one cannot be born into a religion and say that they are perhaps Christian because it is a state religion, it requires more than just conformity and identity.
Religious practice requires faith beyond reason and it requires the practitioner to try and understand the dilemma faith has placed upon them. This is so that they can understand their relationship with god would require something so absurd that the practitioner would need a leap of faith to get where they need to go.
So it seems reason has little place in religion. We just cannot keep going to church on Sunday, sing hymns and go home without a thoughts notice of what we have done. We cannot preach to others on doing rituals. We need to reflect personally how absurd and powerful, that religious doctrines has placed on us and on us alone.
Such ideas led to the birth of existentialism, which looks our choices and the angst it can sometimes lead to.
Shall one dare to take the leap of faith to understand god or does one sit calmly in the seat of rationality?
Kierkegaard also looked at the stages of life in accordance to how one views the world in emotions. These would be as follows
The aesthetic life: Those who were not immoral, but amoral where they seek pleasure in order to experience life. Yet they would not seek pleasure out of malice, but only because they find it makes life more interesting.
The ethical life: Those who seek to be ethical, but using rationality to be fair and just within the social order.
The religious life: Those who throw themselves into their faith even if the doctrines require irrationality. Their faith would place extraordinary demands upon them, asking them to purge themselves of sin.
Kierkegaard viewed the religious life as the highest of ideal, but there is a warning that such a life would be demanding. This is because it would lead to the individual in anxiety of the choices they would have to make. Only because they fully realised what faith actually requires of them.
Kierkegaard lived according to the religious principal and become persecuted because he disassociated himself from state religion and then criticised it.
I felt the chapter wrapped up Kierkegaard's philosophy quite nicely. Though some parts of the chapter I did not fully understand. Why?
Well it seems the more I try to understand Kierkegaard’s philosophy, the more I am in doubt of how difficult it is to explain what seems irrational. The curse of trying to explain the irrational might have landed on this particular chapter in Sophie’s world. Yes, I can understand the chapter on Karl Marx, I can understand the chapter on Charles Darwin and on Hegel (oddly enough), but Kierkegaard takes quite some understanding. I guess in a nutshell, one cannot become too comfortable in their faith.
To be is just not enough, one must also do and become, but the leap of faith forces doubt on our choices.
There is more to come from our famous Danish philosopher as I have other lectures and books on him.
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| Soran Kierkegaard |
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